Wednesday, May 28, 2003

Read the whole thing.
7:20:20 PM    comment   

As usual, he gets it right:

Supercomputing on tap won't live up to to this change-the-world billing, because computation isn't a terribly important part of what people do with computers. This is a lesson we learned with PCs, and it looks like we will be relearning it with Grids.

7:18:41 PM    comment   

Sprint to Offer Intermec Pocket PC. The companies will co-brand the 760 Color device, which integrates 802.11b, Bluetooth and CDMA/GPRS radios. [allNetDevices Wireless News]
6:08:55 PM    comment   

Cisco looks for WLAN boost. Can we manage your access point? [The Register]
6:08:17 PM    comment   

Pyramid Breaks Cometa's Model Down. Pyramid offers glimpse into their analysis of problems with Cometa's model: Pyramid Research has an excerpt of a longer report that explains why Cometa is behind, falling behind fast, and not realistic as to its pricing and deployment.... [Wi-Fi Networking News]
6:05:02 PM    comment   

Wi-Fi Chip Costs to Plummet. From $16 now to $6.50 by end of year: That's for 802.11b; g chips should drop from $18 down to $10; b should wind up around $4 next year. Since the cost of chips is one of the fundamental multipliers for any Wi-Fi equipment, a drop in price by nearly half to two-thirds could shave 10 to 30 percent off the cost at street. A $100 access point could drop to $70, for instance. PC Cards are already as low as $50 and there are some basic costs. I would expect the bottom of the market is $35 for PC Cards, $30 to $35 for USB, and $50 for PCI. Access points could wind up as cheap as $50.... [Wi-Fi Networking News]
6:04:33 PM    comment   

Q&A: Microsoft's Bill Landefeld on Software Assurance changes. The company this week announced plans to bolster the benefits of its Software Assurance program later this year. [Computerworld News]
6:03:17 PM    comment   

WorldCom Wins $20M Bid to Build Baghdad Cell Network. WorldCom won a $20 million contract from the Pentagon to develop a cellular communications system in Baghdad that's based on GSM network technology. [Computerworld Mobile/Wireless News]
6:00:03 PM    comment   

GM Offers Wireless Options to Fleet Buyers. GM will offer small and midsize truck-fleet buyers a wireless data dispatch and fleet-tracking service based on Gearworks mobile software and Nextel phones. [Computerworld Mobile/Wireless News]
5:58:49 PM    comment   

E-Commerce On the Fly. Mobile commerce, or m-commerce, has been slow to catch on as users balk at shopping with handheld devices. But advances in handheld devices, wireless networks and user interfaces could finally make it a reality. [Computerworld Mobile/Wireless News]
5:55:18 PM    comment   

Sprint plans move to packet-switch network. The move, which could take 12 years, lays the groundwork for the next generation of services such as instant videoconferencing, virtual whiteboards and a personal call and e-mail manager. [Computerworld Mobile/Wireless News]
5:54:40 PM    comment   

Sprint's New Boss Handcuffed by His Past. Gary D. Forsee, an industry veteran and Sprint's new chief, had to accept unusual limitations in his new post. By Matt Richtel. [New York Times: Technology]
5:51:27 PM    comment   

Qualcomm's Technology Gains in India. Qualcomm Inc. expects 6 million Indian subscribers to use mobile phones based on its C.D.M.A. technology by the end of the year. By Bloomberg News. [New York Times: Technology]
5:48:02 PM    comment   

InfoWorld Wireless Innovators. InfoWorld honors inventors/visionaries in the enterprise world, including two wireless types: Jaap C. Haartsen, Ericsson's Bluetooth originator, and Skip Crilly, Vivato's antenna and regulations guru.... [Wi-Fi Networking News]
5:47:32 PM    comment   

Wi-Fi in 2M+ Homes. Reports show many users, especially with broadband: Wi-Fi networks were added in 2 million homes in the last two years or so, and a quarter of all broadband subscribers have wireless networks. (Broadband adoption just ratcheted up in the last year significantly, too, although analysts think that the curve will become shallow given the lack of broadband support for many users who want it outside of urban areas.) The report apparently also indicates the Wi-Fi has driven the growth of home networks. No one wants to run wires, that's clear. No one even wants to build their own cables any more: it's too hard to get the high-speed quality with the reduced wiggle room in faster Ethernet.... [Wi-Fi Networking News]
5:11:01 PM    comment   

Hotels with Broadband/Wi-Fi. New directory of hotels with wireless and wired Internet service: The directory is extensive, but it doesn't note which hotels have wired or wireless, or costs. It's a great starting point for planning a bandwidth-necessary trip, however. (Also, I can't get the JavaScript popup menus to work in the latest Apple Safari release, so I can't use the service.) [via LockerGnome's Chris Pirillo]... [Wi-Fi Networking News]
5:10:09 PM    comment   

Bluetooth Makers Watch Helplessly as Connections Fail. David Berlind of Cnet.com demonstrates to Bluetooth promoters standard lacks interop, explicability: In what has to be the second largest publicly documented embarassment to the Bluetooth SIG, Berlind had three Bluetooth promoters come to his home office and watch connection after connection fail. He writes, the SIG representatives revealed that consortiums like Bluetooth SIG are relatively powerless when it comes to cleaning up messes like this one. Actually, only because the Bluetooth SIG allowed the name Bluetooth to be put on devices without a lab interop/certification program like Wi-Fi.... [Wi-Fi Networking News]
4:57:45 PM    comment   

Acrimony at Telecom Conference. MCI deserves death penalty, Wi-Fi flash in the pan at telecom conference: Read the article and then consider Verizon's position. If you're a monopoly player restricting access to DSL customers and your principal rival, Comcast, hasn't quite figure out how to offer the right mix to its cable customers at the right price, then you can play games about charging per computer or talking down Wi-Fi. (The Cox spokesperson made the claim that two percent of their users use 40 percent of the bandwidth, but that doesn't mean they know whether that's legitimate use or not!) But if there is adequate competition, then if Verizon wants to charge you a higher rate to share a connection with multiple machines via Wi-Fi (or not allow it at all) and Speakeasy (my home and business ISP) not only lets you share bandwidth with your computers but with neighbors and throws in a cheap Wi-Fi gateway...it's easy to see where the market forces lead. The clear answer is that with limited choices for consumers, the monopolies will try to force them into their mold. More choices means that some ISP will "win" by offering the right package at the right price. If they can sustain the model, they can beat the telcos.... [Wi-Fi Networking News]
4:57:14 PM    comment   

RV Wi-Fi. Increasingly, RV parks have Wi-Fi: If you spent a cool million on your luxury road yacht, why not $35 per month for unlimited Wi-Fi while parked?... [Wi-Fi Networking News]
4:56:09 PM    comment   

Qualcomm on Wi-Fi Hot Spots. Long memo from Qualcomm exec on his Wi-Fi and 2.5G experiences over a long trip: Alan Reiter posts a long memo sent by a Qualcomm executive to internal folk (we think) and analysts like Alan about his personal experiences with Wi-Fi on the road and contrasts that with his experiences using cell data that employs technology patented by Qualcomm. I've emailed the exec to ask if he'd be willing to read a long rebuttal I plan to write. I agree with many of his specifics, but not all of them, and some of his propositions are strawmen, intentionally or not, that don't hold water. I hope he engages: Qualcomm is a leading light in the 3G evolution (like with EvDO: Evolution Data-Only), and their insight and market actions will affect the development of Wi-Fi and 3G. Unfortunately, the company has been on the record lately with statements about Wi-Fi which are specious or too specific, and which are entirely too self-serving. This memo has much better depth, breadth, logic, and fact behind it.... [Wi-Fi Networking News]

One could have levelled the same criticisms at the (wide area) cellular industry not so long ago...
4:52:27 PM    comment   


Wearable Wi-Fi. Show me your Wi-Fi: Fashionable, too. [via Doc Searls]... [Wi-Fi Networking News]
3:10:30 PM    comment   

ARM adding hardware-based security to its processor cores. Next year, the company will add extensions to its processor cores that incorporate hardware-based security technologies. [Computerworld Security News]
3:10:04 PM    comment   

My Rebuttal to Qualcomm's Strawmen. Jeffrey K. Belk, senior vice president of marketing at Qualcomm, makes many excellent points in his open memo (republished on Alan Reiter's blog) on using wireless data on the road. I want to separate out and rebut some of his contentions, however, as I believe that while his fundamentals are almost always correct, he has set up some strawmen, and has misstated the state of the Wi-Fi hot spot industry. Throughout his comments, he fails to separate the financial model that might underlie Wi-Fi hot spot deployment and its actual technical limitations. This is partly due to the ubiquitous, slow-everywhere mindset that he's coming from. The crux of Belk's contentions begin with this statement: Because we all know that although we have 56kpbs modems, we don't get 56kbps, we get 30-45kbps. So, if I were to travel on a one week trip in the US, say going from San Diego to San Francisco. Then from San Francisco to Chicago to New York and home, I could access use my Wireless Wide Area PC card and be productive---anywhere I have wireless coverage, anywhere I can make a phone call. As much as I need to...at a fixed rate of $80 per month. This $80 per month is a rate for 1x CDMA2000 through SprintPCS and Verizon Wireless through Qualcomm's corporate rate. This statement seems more or less correct and fundamental: anywhere, he can get something approximating a modem call with no hidden charges. That's his starting point. London is Falling I checked into the One Aldwych hotel in London... Unfortunately, he appears to have chosen one of the very few locations in the world that requires its own software and a weird setup to activate. Only locations that have chosen to only work with Boingo Wireless's system have any comparable bar to entry, and Boingo's software is superior to Windows in managing Wi-Fi configurations -- and it doesn't have to be uninstalled later, as Belk notes is critical with the software One Aldwych is using. The problems with One Aldwych have been documented extensively elsewhere, including in columns by travel writers Joe Brantcatelli (JoeSentMe.com) and Joe Sharkey (New York Times's Business section). The service is also ridiculously expensive, running eight pounds for two hours in the trial and 16 pounds for 24 hours after the trial was over. By comparison, most US-based Wi-Fi hotel service is $7 to $10 per day... [Wi-Fi Networking News]
3:08:40 PM    comment   

Wi-Fi hot spots and the future of broadband were on the minds of attendees at the Bandwidth Explosion colloquium at Harvard Business School.
2:38:39 PM    comment   

Barry Diller finds profits in e-commerce
2:38:12 PM    comment   

So far, information technology has thrived on exponentials. Now it has to get back to earth, says Ludwig Siegele
2:37:11 PM    comment   

NTT DoCoMo Inc., the world's second-largest mobile-phone operator, probably had a fiscal second- half profit after avoiding investment-related losses and adding users to its high-speed wireless Internet service. Net income at Japan's largest company by market value probably totaled 200.8 billion yen ($1.7 billion) in the six months ended March 31, according to the median estimate of eight analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News. Based on U.S. accounting standards, which the company began using in the April-September period last year, DoCoMo had a 205 billion yen net loss a year ago after writing off much of its overseas investments.
2:28:44 PM    comment   

NTT DATA Corporation and NEC Corporation announced the completion of NTT DoCoMo Corporation (NTT DoCoMo) next i-mode gateway system named "CiRCUS". i-mode gateway system, "CiRCUS", is the backbone system supporting more than 37 million i-mode subscribers using mail services and web access services and also is one of the world's largest mission critical system in open environment, based upon leading edge open architecture technology.
2:28:05 PM    comment   

NTT DoCoMo Inc. Chief Executive Officer Keiji Tachikawa's bet on new mobile-phone services and lower spending are beginning to pay off, restoring growth at Japan's largest company by market value after its first-ever loss. Investors credit the turnaround to Tachikawa's decision to subsidize costs of developing mobile phone handsets at companies such as NEC Corp. and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., helping sell more services. A spending cap and a popular picture-messaging service also helped lift DoCoMo's shares 28 percent since March 10, rebounding from a 41 percent drop in the previous 12 months.
2:27:09 PM    comment   

The world is experiencing unprecedented immigration transformations, says Harvard University?s Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco. And business leaders should be listening.
2:22:11 PM    comment   

Your competitors, closely analyzed, can help you influence your own customers and help grow the market for your products and services. Here's how.
2:20:16 PM    comment   

Frozen foods were once pitched to women wearing pearls. So how did they become a mass market commodity? A Business History Review excerpt.
2:19:34 PM    comment   

Harvard Business School professor Leslie A. Perlow explains how being nice can lead to disastrous results in this Harvard Business Review excerpt.
2:19:06 PM    comment   

© Copyright 2005 Omar Javaid .
Last update: 6/28/05; 12:00:01 AM .

Click here to visit the Radio UserLand website. Valid CSS! Subscribe to "Mobilog" in Radio UserLand. Click to see the XML version of this web page. Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.